The Best Sandwich I Ate All Summer

With apologies to all of the chicken biscuits, lobster rolls, eastern North Carolina BBQ sandwiches, BLTs, pimento cheese, and tomato and mayo sandwiches that I’ve consumed this summer, there’s no summer sandwich quite as good as the shrimp burger from the Big Oak Drive In & BBQ in Salter Path, North Carolina.

What is it about this sandwich? It’s not the tiny, hot, deep fried shrimp, or the tartar sauce, or the finely chopped cole slaw, or the ketchup, or the dousing of Texas Pete hot sauce, or the steamed squishy white bun that houses all of this. It’s not the impatient wait in the hot parking lot during the lunch rush or the torturous 5-minute drive back to the air conditioned house as the sandwich grease threatens to tear a hole in the white paper bag. No, with the Big Oak shrimp burger, it’s a textural thing. It’s the way that this sandwich, when pressed together between two hands and eaten over the parchment paper wrapping to catch any drippings, goes down the hatch. In two bites, you’re halfway done. You don’t really have time to think about nuances or subtleties, nor would you have time to spell them if you tried. Two bites later and you’re done. Next time you’ll order two.